FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE

Devin Nunes, the Republican congressman who is pretending to lead the House investigation into Russian interference in our presidential election, claims an informant leaked him some inside information on who the FBI has been surveilling.  Given the handwringing among Republicans who bewail the leaks of classified information in this particular investigation, what do you suppose Nunes did about this leak?

Here’s what he did NOT do.  He did not denounce or identify the leaker, or turn him in to the FBI to face criminal charges.  Nor did he share whatever new information he received with his colleagues on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, because there are Democrats on that committee and Nunes is a typically petty Republican.

No, instead of following protocol, Nunes ran to Paul Ryan and told him the news, and then ran to the White House to tell Donald Trump.  Then he held a press conference to share some, but not all, of the information with the entire world.  That press conference would have been called a leak if a Democrat had done it, but Republicans are entitled to make up rules and break them if they feel like it. 

Nunes said that the informant told him that members of Donald Trump’s transition team had indeed been under FBI surveillance – legal surveillance – after the election.  In fact, he said, there were “multiple warrants out there” involving Trump’s people, and that although his source didn’t name names, it was easy for him to figure out who they were.   Presumably he shared that information with Ryan and Trump.

Keep in mind that there are only two conditions under which a FISA court authorizes electronic surveillance of American citizens:  1) the targets are agents of a foreign government; or 2) the targets are subjects of a criminal investigation.  Or both at once, of course.

We know that both Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort (paid $10 million/year by Russia) and former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn (paid $500,000 by Turkey and additional thousands by Russian business interests) were agents of foreign governments.  What we don’t know is who else among Trump’s transition team might meet one or both of the FISA criteria for surveillance.

The always trustworthy Sean Spicer assures us that Donald Trump was shocked – shocked! – to learn that two of his closest advisors were paid agents of foreign governments.  That doesn’t exactly speak well for the vetting that went on during the campaign and transition.  But whether or not Trump knew that Manafort and Flynn were foreign agents last fall, it’s now a matter of public record.  It doesn’t take much imagination to guess that they’d have been under surveillance.  The tip that Nunes got must have been about more than that.  

One possibility is that Nunes learned that the FBI has been surveilling additional Trump insiders (and therefore indirectly gathering data on everyone who phoned, texted, or emailed one of the people under surveillance), and decided to pass that information on to Trump   Since Nunes was part of Trump’s national security transition team, it’s even possible that some of his own conversations are now in possession of the FBI.

Or maybe Nunes wasn’t really conveying new information to Donald Trump.  Maybe he was staging an event that would give Trump a pretext to claim some sort of vague vindication for his tweet accusing President Obama of placing a “tapp” on his phones.  That scenario wouldn’t even require that there actually was a new source, because it was pretty clear from the public record that Manafort and Flynn (at a minimum) were being surveilled, and logic would suggest that intercepts of their phone conversations and email exchanges would include both sides of the conversation. 

Or maybe Nunes is neck deep in a crumbling conspiracy, and when he learned the identities of some unexpected surveillance targets he hurried to tell Trump so that Trump could pass the information on to the relevant attorneys, giving them a head start on building a defense against criminal charges.  

None of these scenarios reflect well on Devin Nunes, a fact that Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform was quick to point out.  At best, Nunes is a partisan hack, placing the short-term interests of the Republican Party ahead of the long-term interests of American democracy.  At worst, he’s a traitor.  Either way, Nunes should recuse himself from any connection to ongoing intelligence investigations.

Whatever his motive, Nunes is doing a darn good imitation of a man trying to hide a terrible secret.  He won’t be successful because he’s none too bright, and neither are his co-conspirators.  Manafort and Flynn have left too many pieces of the puzzle face up, and the press is now putting them together.  The FBI knows more than they’re telling, but it’s clear that they’re conducting a criminal investigation of one or more of Trump’s close associates.    

There’s a lot we don’t know yet, including what crimes were committed, who committed them, and who else may have done something illegal by helping with the cover up.  But the answers to those questions will come.  I know I sound like a broken record, but too many people are acting guilty as hell for everyone to be innocent. 

And as icing on the cake, for however long the investigation takes to complete, it will cast a shadow over Donald Trump and his administration.